Creative Team
Original Story: Sean McKeever
Artist: Allan Goldman & Yildiray Cinar
Inker: Julio Ferreira
Colorist: JD Smith
Story – The New Deal: Finale
Review
No it is not a typo instead of the credits saying “Written by” it actually says “Original Story by” Sean McKeever. In this past weeks Lying in the Gutters Rich is the first to point this out and it does beg the question who actually wrote this, and the annual, issue. Going into a crossover between Teen Titans, Titans, and Vigilante it is hard to see if that crossover will be worth getting as we don’t even know if McKeever and Wolfman will be the writers. Hey maybe Dan Didio is writing all of the issues and is just working off those writers outlines. Who knows? Still it is pretty sloppy work by Didio and Cunningham that they don’t even give credit to whoever actually wrote this issue.
That aside Teen Titans #69 ends the the 4-part recruitment arc that in truth has been going on since the end of Infinite Crisis. The one thing that this issue proved was that instead of wasting so much time with the recruitment process that it would have been better if the Terror Titans mini-series was actually a storyline that was going on within the pages of Teen Titans as that mini-series had much more impact on this title than the previous 3 issues of Teen Titans. At best this recruitment arc should have been only 2 issues instead of 4.
And as you can probably tell from the cover the new team for this title is: Wonder Girl, a depowered Red Devil, Blue Beetle, Aquagirl, Static, Bombshell, Miss Martian, and Kid Eternity. This is not a bad line-up as Wonder Girl, Blue Beetle, Miss Marian, Aquagirl, and Static give this team some serious power to match up against other teams. If Tim and Bart actually do return to the team once the mini-series they are involved in are over I think their addition would make this a pretty badass team no villain would want to mess with. And I don’t really have much of a problem with Kid Eternity being on the team though I would have preferred it if Zatara would have been the team’s magic based hero as I see him as a character with a lot of untapped potential.
The only real problem I have with the line-up of this team is the membership of Bombshell and Eddie. For Bombshell it is not even funny with how they are trying to make her Ravager’s replacement. And Bombshell only comes of as a poor man’s (or woman’s) Ravager though it looks like we will be stuck with the character for a while as Rose will be starring in the back-up feature in Teen Titans for at least a year. And I think the Ravager back-up will only hurt Bombshell being on the team as in this issue I remember the short Ravager scene more than anything Bombshell did in the whole issue.
Now maybe the most frustrating member is Eddie still being on the team. No offense to Eddie fans but after more than 30 issues worth of the character being on the team, with at least 4 issues of Teen Titans spotlighting him, I think it is time for this character to go. At this point he has nothing to add to the team as the comedic relief is brought in a much more effect fashion by Blue Beetle and Static. Even when Eddie had his powers I still felt that the character to be a questionable addition to the team and now that he does not have his powers I don’t see what Eddie can add to the team other than playing the angsty character.
On art side of things I found Goldman and Cinar’s artwork to be not half bad. The artwork for this issue had a sort of Mark Bagley quality to it during the middle part of his run on Ultimate Spider-Man. They did a nice job bringing enough energy to this issue so that it did not feel as slow as it should have been though I did find their art to be odd at times as they over-did-it with how much muscle tone they gave some of the characters in a few panels.
Issue Rating
Story: 3.3/10 – Whoever wrote this issue finally brought this boring recruitment arc come to an end.
Art: 7/10 – The artwork by Goldman and Cinar was serviceable though I would like it if we would finally get an artist to stay on this title for more than two story arcs at least.
Overall: 5.15/10 – We finally get an official team now but who wants to bet that at least one member will leave, or die, before the Teen Titans/Titans/Vigilante crossover.